Citizen Science Programme Manager

Closing date for applications: Friday 31 March 2023

Fee: £180 per day – paid on a contractor basis

Fixed Term: 12-month contract – subject to a 1-month probationary period.

Working Hours: 22.5 hours per week (equivalent to 3 days) to be worked flexibly but ideally based on core hours Monday to Friday between 8am and 6pm, with occasional evening and weekend working.

Working base: Home and Radnorshire Wildlife Trust (RWT) Warwick House in Llandrindod Wells

Contract Status: As a contractor, you will be responsible for your own tax, pension and national insurance.

Job description

The Citizen Science Programme Manager will be responsible for overseeing and managing Friends of the Upper Wye's citizen science water quality monitoring project and working to extend its reach and impact.

We currently have 130 citizen scientists regularly testing water quality in the Wye catchment, and many volunteers awaiting training to join our project. The Manager will be coordinating a team of around 200 volunteers.

You need to keep our incredible volunteers engaged, motivated and well-informed. You will need to send regular emails updating them on news and organise meetings and social events.

You need to keep our volunteers topped up with testing supplies, mainly via the four equipment hubs we operate across the Upper Wye catchment. You need to keep track of equipment, ordering and distributing new stock as needed.

You will need to keep across the data being collected by our volunteers in order to identify pollution hotspots on the Wye, investigate their causes and advocate for their resolutions.

You will work to improve the accuracy of the data collected. To ensure that the data being collected is of the highest quality, you will seek to correct any inconsistencies in the data and reach out to volunteers who may need help to improve the accuracy of their data collection.

You will collaborate with other interested parties to maximise the utility and impact of our data. In particular, you will work closely with the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and Dwr Cymru Welsh Water to ensure that they are making the best use of our data.

Volunteer insurance and the health and safety framework are currently provided by Radnorshire Wildlife Trust (on the Welsh side) and Herefordshire Wildlife Trust (on the English side), so you will liaise with the Wildlife Trusts on these matters.

You will help us to communicate our findings and tell stories about our project, our volunteers and our discoveries.

You will strategically assess the coverage of our volunteer network and seek to fill any gaps by actively recruiting volunteers in areas which are not currently being monitored and/or build up capacity on key tributaries so that we can investigate pollution hotspots with greater precision. You will help to organise training sessions for new volunteers by identifying suitable training venues and liaising with the trainers and volunteers to ensure the training sessions run smoothly and successfully.

You will be passionate about using the data collected by our volunteers to inform and drive change to clean up the Wye. You can be enterprising and innovative in how you achieve this.

You will support Friends of the Upper Wye to communicate and campaign with its citizen science work and fundraise for its future. 

Our ideal candidate

We're looking for a dynamic, enterprising person who is highly organised, confident working with data and good with people - and who, most importantly, is passionate about improving water quality for the Wye.

We're looking for someone who will be a strategic leader for citizen science and who is also happy to take a hands-on role with the training, organisation and motivation of volunteers.

You can find the full job description and specifications for the skills we’re looking for here - and find an application form and details on how to apply at this link.

Applications should be submitted to science@fouw.org.uk by Friday 31 March. Don’t hesitate to get in contact if you’re interested in the role and have any questions.

If you want to get more of a sense of what our citizen science project is all about, you can watch our short film about it here.

LINKS:

Job description: https://www.rwtwales.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/Citizen%20Science%20Programme%20Manager%20Contract.pdf

How to apply: https://www.rwtwales.org/jobs/citizen-science-programme-manager